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100 Characters For 100 Otaku (Part Fourteen: 35-31)

Can you believe it’s been two whole weeks since “100 Characters For 100 Otaku” began? Neither can I! But it’s still a’runnin and heading on towards the finale! We’ve still got a good week more before that, though, so keep on stickin’ around! Today we have numbers 35 down through 31 to play with, so let’s get into it!

A Mirror For Otaku: Domon doesn’t understand women. Bad enough that he misses out on Allenby’s advances and shows no romantic interest to her in spite of their closeness, but he can’t even see the blatantly obvious love of his lifetime friend Rain. Likewise, and otaku wouldn’t know a girl was attracted to him if she deliberately pulled out her cute netbook.

Reflecting My Otakudom: Domon has a great master who he looks up to, Master Asia (one of the stragglers off of this list), who teaches him all that he knows about fighting. Master Asia betrays Domon, though to ends that may or may not have been justified to him. I, too, have had many great masters, such as ghostlightning and lolikitsune, along with more from my past. None have really betrayed me yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised…

The First Episode of Crest of the Stars: Domon somewhat mistakenly believes that his master has betrayed him for the side of evil. Similarly, Jinto’s caretaker has mistaken his father for betraying humanity.

Why I Like Him: God fucking damn I love Luffy. His happy-go-lucky attitude, never-say-die code of ethics, and general badassery are always sure to put a big smile on my face. I think what I love most is Luffy’s bug-eyes appearance. He looks like a madman, but just the kind of madman who will lead you to the end of time. A solid heart with a solid fist, pumped towards the sky.

A Mirror For Otaku: Luffy is everything that an otaku isn’t, but wishes they could be. Headstrong, honest, determined, unafraid, unabashed, faithful, loyal, dependable, adventurous, and always happy. Ultimately, he’s like all of our dream persona. Unless our dream is world domination. And then we probably already have a lot in common with Luffy.

Reflecting My Otakudom: Luffy is who I try to be with all my might. I fight on for my goal, never surrendering to any circumstances, always chasing the biggest dream, and full of life and love for it. The One Piece is to Luffy what the ultimate favorites list is to me – Valhalla.

The First Episode of Crest of the Stars: Luffy would have been Jinto’s father – taking one for the team so that his friends may live happily. Though I’m sure he’d also probably kick the Abh’s ass.

Why I Like Her: Revy has a black tongue and a blood red personality. She’s sick, twisted, and doesn’t give a quarter of a fuck about your life or anyone else’s. But it all boils down to philosophy. She thinks one way, and Rock thinks another. He isn’t some sunshine boy, but he’ll teach Revy a thing or two about manners and why philosophy cannot always be an excuse for action. Revy is a hot head full of hot lead, but she’s cooling off. The cooler she gets, the more beautiful I find her, but I can’t claim her if I can’t tame her.

A Mirror For Otaku: Revy has a tendency to try and justify her actions through personal philosophy. The same can be said for otaku – we have a lot of controversial elements to our hobby, such as strange sexual tendencies, frowned-upon behavior, and usually some form of illegal activity, all of which we can make a laundry list of justifications for. Luckily, ours are a lot more legally stable than Revy’s.

Reflecting My Otakudom: I will justify my actions to the grave – ask anyone who’s argued with me (lol). In order to win an argument with me, you basically have to root your argument into my own moral code and beat me through it, meaning I only ever loose to people I respect enough to admit have defeated me. Guess what the only thing I ever argue about is~

The First Episode of Crest of the Stars: Revy can take a pair of guns and clear a room full of fifteen heavily armed mercenaries two-handedly. If the humans really wanted to fend off the Abh’s invasion, they would have had to pull off something at least that badass.

Why I Like Him: Kenshin is a character whom I love for being just that – a character. I’ve seen Kenshin’s life from his early childhood all the way to his eventual death in old age. Kenshin is like an epic hero – you are given his story and a list of his exploits, and at all times he is larger than life. Even when he is a child, the events surrounding him are so extreme, and in adulthood, he is a man who no other man could ever kill. Truly a hero for the ages.

A Mirror For Otaku: Kenshin only wants to do good, and I think somewhere in every otaku’s heart, they want to do good as well. Otaku can be very giving to their community, be they fansubbers and artists willing to face stigmata to give to their fellow otaku, or badasses who make the culture richer. Every otaku has something they want to give to the greater otakudom.

Reflecting My Otakudom: I’ve always been jealous of those whom I consider to give something real to the culture. I don’t have the passion to learn to draw, or carve awesome wood statuettes or anything, so I just hope that I can eventually develop my writing talent until it becomes something that is somehow an asset to life as an English-speaking otaku.

The First Episode of Crest of the Stars: Kenshin had a very traumatic childhood, what with most of the people he came into contact with being horribly murdered before his eyes. Jinto can’t claim to have anything quite so mortifying, but he has the continued life-altering experiences of losing his mother and his father becoming the hated martyr for the human race.

Why I Like Her: Besides that she rides a motorcycle, my love for her can be placed on her self-described mental issues: “It’s a messiah complex.” Kirima Nagi has an obsession with abnormality and with trying to do something more for the world than it has – things she is fully aware were mentally imposed on her by her later father’s writings. She monitors everything in town and gears up like a madwoman to go literally fight crime, often of the supernatural world, just because of her own obsession. “The Fire Witch” is definitely crazy all right!

A Mirror For Otaku: Kirima Nagi fully understands her own insanity. From what I’ve seen, the same seems to be true for a great many otaku. As was stated by one of the side-characters in the anime adaption of Welcome to the NHK, ‘I’ve read all of the self-help books. I know how to get my life back on-track. I just don’t do it.’ This, I feel, is the mindset of many otaku.

Reflecting My Otakudom: Myself included. I’ve been researching psychology since I was 14 in search of why I didn’t feel like I was normal. I of course found out that normalcy is abnormality, and that true abnormality was in the beings dressed as fantasies. After all, to quote the fictional Kirima Seiichi from Kouhei Kadono’s Boogiepop Returns, as translated by Andrew Cunningham, “Possibility, or what we refer to as Imagination, is 99% imitation. The real deal is only 1%. The problem is, this 1% is simultaneously referred to as Evil.”

The First Episode of Crest of the Stars: Kirima Nagi sees a bigger picture than most of the world. She will be the bastard to society if she can save it in the shadows. Because she can take it. Because she’s not the hero that this city needs, but the one that they deserve. (Sorry.) Jinto’s father allowed himself to be hated to be a hero. I wonder if he, too, had a messiah complex.

Himura Kenshin, now there’s a name I haven’t seen in a looooong time. Rurouni Kenshin feels in some ways to be the 90s; the show looks unabashedly dated now in comparison to modern anime, but Kenshin’s character traits and willingness to do good are still quite familiar in more recent shows.